Monday, February 23, 2009

What color is the chicken?

This is one of those classic ONLY IN EGYPT moments. The other night my friend S came over and was hungry so she decided to order OTLOB. S decided she wanted crispy strips from KFC. The order arrived on time and S immediately went to work on the french fries. Finally, taking a bite of one of the crispy chicken strips, S discovered that they were spicy, when in fact, she had ordered regular. After several minutes deliberating over our problem we decided to email the guys at Otlob. When this produced no result, we decided that my husband (W) should call KFC. Here is how the conversation went:

W: Hold on one minute I will ask her.(Turns to S and says: He wants to know what color the chicken is.)

At this point, S and I start tearing the chicken strips apart to check the color. Well, ummmm...let's see...this one looks kind of off-white with a hint of orange.

W gets the manager to agree to send over a new order. All three of us burst out into hysterical laughter. We came up with a whole list of questions the KFC manager could have asked us:

What was the chicken's name?Was the chicken happy or sad?When was the chicken's birthday?

Next I decided I wanted to eat S's coleslaw. This provoked yet another debate. "You can't eat it," she told me. "They will want it back."

"And what are they going to do with it? Sell it to someone else?" I started to eye the box of spicy chicken strips on the table. "I'm going to eat these, too!"

I was really starting to miss the whole American "The customer is never wrong" policy. The no questions asked, sorry we f**ked up you order - here is a new one type of customer service I had become accustomed to. It does not work that way here. I convinced S that the KFC guy would never know she hadn't eaten the coleslaw first and I ate it. It's a good thing, too. When the new order finally showed up (about 45 minutes later) it was sans coleslaw. W exchanged the spicy, off-white, slightly orange chicken strips for the new box. So S finally got her chicken strips. The night was not a complete loss for me, however. W and I split the second order of fries!